A Question of Faith?: Stengers and Whitehead on Causation and Conformation

Abstract

A Question of Faith? Stengers and Whitehead on Causation and Conformation Michael Halewood (bio) Introduction Generalized solutions with apparently limitless applications are anathema to Isabelle Stengers, who demands that we recognize the specificity of the remit of the abstractions that we are constructing. One hallmark of her work is the distrust of any response that appears to be able to mollify a wide range of positions, problems or questions. Stengers is also wary of denouncing the positions held by opponents by claiming to trap them in a logical vice or pinning them in an absurdity. This is why, in this article, I do not set out to solve either the problem of cause or the problem of faith. Instead, I want to eavesdrop on the ongoing conversation between Stengers and Whitehead and to provide some comments on how their remarks could help us reorient how we approach some of the unexpected interrelations between faith and cause in science, philosophy, and social science. Stengers’s stance does not imply that we should not be ambitious in the questions or problems that we address; though there is a need to pay attention to that which has been isolated as being of concern. In the discussions that follow, I will ask some apparently general questions, but these are motivated by a central problem, namely, the very status of cause and causation. When we take a strict theoretical approach to science, or adopt a purely philosophical position, we might find it easy to say that there is no such thing as cause in the abstract. There is no hidden ultimate cause that sits behind the world, governing, regulating and explaining every single moment, item and process of existence. Yet, we also believe that smoking causes cancer; we tell children that matches can cause fires; we inform our insurance company that it was the other car that caused the accident. However, such mentions of causation lack the strength of a full concept of cause. It is not that smoking inevitably and always leads to cancer; or that all matches are determined to produce fires; or that the other driver was compelled to crash into us. The effect is not present in the cause: the same cause does not always produce the same effect. This leaves us in the tricky position where we may dismiss cause on theoretical [End Page 80] grounds, but we find it harder to do without some notion of causation in our everyday lives. It is this problematic status of causation, as something that we may deny in some aspects of our lives and yet require in others, that I want to address in this article. For reasons which I hope will become clear, I will also link this to the notion of faith in science and in social science. I will use Stengers’s ideas to argue that we need some clarity with regard to the distinctions between cause as an abstract concept, individual causes, and the very notion of causation. Too often these are mixed, the boundaries blurred, and this can lead to unnecessary confusion and a premature rejection of “cause” as a genuine factor in the world and our experience of it. This lack of clarity certainly constitutes a problem for many a sociologist who have all been carefully schooled to talk only of correlations and to avoid, like the plague, any mention of direct causes; so that they unthinkingly cite the modern sociologist’s mantra –“Correlation is not causation”– a mantra which only makes sense if the very concept of cause is seen as problematic, as something to be shunned. In the analyses which follow, there are three elements that I want to draw out, in place of a solution. These are, first, the particular, and slightly peculiar, stance of modern science with regard to cause. Second, the idea that the problem of the problem of cause is one that we have inherited in a very specific way. A recognition of this legacy could allow for us to rethink the scope of this problem. Third, a reconsideration of the role of faith in both science and social science. Perhaps social science has lost faith in cause, when there...